Saturday, June 20, 2009

On Terrorist Watch List, but Allowed to Buy Guns

Jeez!

A double-hit from the NYT today. First there was Bob Herbert's loathesome op-ed tying gun owners to hate groups. Now they're giving prominent coverage to Sen. Frank Lautenberg's introduction of a bill to give the U.S. Attorney General (currently the virulently anti-gun Eric Holder) the discretion to deny gun purchases to persons on the terrorist watch list.

The TWL is secret, of course, and there have been some very odd people whose names have turned up on the list, from Ted Kennedy to Cat Stevens. And people whose names are on the list, or even just closely resemble a name on the list, have a damnably hard time figuring out what on earth is going on; they have to sue in federal court just to find out if they're on the list at all. It's a Kafkaesque situation that we ought not to have in the U.S. It ought to be easier for citizens to challenge the TWL.

Lautenberg's bill will probably not make it out of committee, thank goodness, but this crafty old gun-hater has gotten around that obstacle before, by offering a last-minute amendment on the Senate floor to a larger bill that the leadership wants passed without delay. And it could happen again.

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"If you've got to resist, your chances of being hurt are less the more lethal your weapon. If that were my wife, would I want her to have a .38 Special in her hand? Yeah." - Dr. Arthur Kellermann, Health Magazine (March/April 1994) p 61